The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  Keiran whispered a calming melody into Emmett’s ear, and Emmett felt the familiar rush of hot water being poured over his head. He quickly regained his composure and nodded, forcing himself upright to hurry behind Keiran as they followed Oliver.

  The deserted waterfront was shrouded in a wet fog that hung low to the water. The roiling winter storm raged farther east out to sea as rain lashed down on them. Emmett barely heard or saw the first wave of the attack. Two bellowing clouds of darkness hurtled through the night, and as Oliver sprinted forward toward their unseen attackers, Keiran lunged sideways, knocking Emmett to the ground. The warehouse wall exploded with another massive hole where the darkness collided with it.

  Oliver called out with a tenor note into the roar of the storm, and as if in response, Emmett heard the high-pitched screech of a hawk overhead. His eyes met Keiran’s at once, and the wash of relief and worry in Keiran’s eyes confirmed what he knew.

  Amala was close.

  “Come on,” Keiran said as he pulled Emmett up, breaking into a full run.

  Oliver turned down the road between a pair of buildings just as three figures dashed toward Keiran from a hidden alleyway. Twisting mid-run, Keiran spun to meet his attackers with a forceful note that blasted into two of them just as the third spun out of the way and headed for Emmett.

  Determined to fight through the numbing cold that was enclosing his lungs, Emmett brought his fists up, prepared to fight. The Revenant worshipper raised high a curved blade stained with bloody runes.

  Keiran reacted with another wail, producing a wall of sound that hurtled a shimmering force toward the attacker. The assailant reacted quickly and slashed his blade downward, slicing Keiran’s force in two with a shrill sort of whine. Doubling back, he brought the force of his blade fully at Emmett’s head, and Keiran’s defeated attack bought Emmett just enough time to duck out of the swing.

  Emmett stumbled back as his attacker swung downward with a heave that could have easily sliced though him had he not ducked away. The blade whistled through the air just as Keiran leapt into the man from the side and knocked him to the ground, falling into a tangled heap of kicks and punches. Emmett looked for some kind of weapon. He heard Keiran suck in a heavy breath just as a swift knee was brought to his chest. Winded, Keiran did not react in time to another series of punches to his face.

  The Revenant raised his blade high over Keiran’s head. Emmett prepared to jump on him just as a hawk dove through the air, striking the attacker’s face and spraying a plume of blood across the ground. He dropped his blade and clutched at the eyeballs dangling from his emptied sockets.

  Emmett saw a woman’s figure standing over Keiran’s body before he heard her. Her scarlet red dress and black crushed velvet overcoat fell down to her black heels. Her green eyes twinkled like polished emeralds, and her impossibly long neck was framed in a mass of red curls that tumbled down the length of her narrow back, the pounding winds tossing it into the air as if it were living fire.

  Emmett saw the hawk wrestle its wings in the wind and land atop her shoulder.

  “Amala’s engaging the bulk of their force over there,” the woman said to Keiran.

  “Come on,” Keiran said to Emmett as the woman sprinted off.

  They ran together, turning down the same alley Oliver had. As they burst from the narrow passage to an empty parking lot, Emmett gasped and struggled to concentrate as another wave of nausea rippled through him.

  The parking lot was a mess of bodies. Only a pair of street lamps cast any light on the fighting. Emmett could see that Amala and Oliver were openly fighting at least four attackers, with several more lying motionless on the ground around them. Amala’s arms pumped in the air with such speed that her twin serpents were a blur in what was quickly becoming a downpour of ice.

  Oliver was managing to buffet the scratching, dark words they spat at Amala as they summoned wretched globes of inky darkness. He met their attacks with his own songs of force, shielding either Amala or himself from their power with walls of invisible energy that either absorbed or reflected the darkness.

  The red-haired woman dove into the fray with twirling abandon, her arms flailing out in wide sweeps as her hawk took flight again. The bird circled once overhead before diving down and clawing the eyes of one of her attackers. Emmett all but collapsed on the ground as Keiran released him at the edge of the fighting, raising his hand high into the air and calling down a bellowing force of invisible energy that toppled one of the attackers with a sickening crunch.

  Neither Amala nor Oliver gave notice of them, yet Emmett saw their movements flow as one, the others’ arms and legs an extension of their own body. The woman pirouetted between Amala’s arms as she feigned an attack at the Revenants. Oliver ducked through the twisting serpents then and bellowed a powerful note of force that picked their attacker several feet off the ground, where the hawk’s razor talons connected with yielding flesh and neck.

  Emmett’s body was racked by the spreading chill of the storm’s onslaught overhead. Though the nausea was subsiding with the final dead attacker, he was aware of the dizzying pain the Rot and the arctic winds were sending through his body.

  Over the howling wind and rain, Emmett thought he could hear something else. Distant and vague. He could not tell if the sound was real or imagined, but as he focused, he felt an unusual sensation run up the length of his back as something brushed against his ear like a whisper.

  Far across the opposite end of the parking lot, a swirling, coalescing mass of undulating darkness swam through the air toward them. The falling rain parted in wide sheets like drawn curtains. The massive shadow twisted high in the air, floating along on currents that bore it aloft high above the surrounding buildings in the distance.

  As it crossed over the mass of fallen bodies, the two flickering street lamps exploded violently in a shower of sparks. The area plunged into darkness, pierced only by the hint of lightning arcs crackling across the stormy horizon.

  Emmett saw the darkness contort, jerking in the air and racing suddenly right for him. He saw Keiran lunging toward him with a raised hand as he sang a high-pitched, almost screeching note whose volume was swallowed by a deafening bellow of thunder above. The darkness swirled and parted for the invisible force that hurtled toward it, reforming a moment later and tearing through the stormy night at Emmett.

  Again, Keiran lifted both arms wide and growled an angry note that was heavy with desperation. It was a low, throaty rumble that formed deep within his body and produced a brassy tone of anguish pouring out at the darkness. With startling speed, the darkness swirled in the downpour, undulating in a sort of hypnotic dance. Yet Keiran persisted, holding his low voice with great effort. As waves of baritone notes resounded, the darkness seemed to twist back in on itself in the air, unable to descend upon Emmett.

  The dark mass was only feet from Emmett now. He saw Keiran straining to hold his note that seemed to be barring the darkness. Emmett registered confusion in some distant part of his mind—a part not already subsumed by the pain—when he saw Amala and the other woman jumping after Keiran.

  Amala and the other woman grabbed at Keiran’s arms and pulled him out of his song. As they did, the darkness swirled in the air. Suddenly free, it plunged through the rain in a whirlpool of shadows, hurtling toward him just as he closed his eyes shut and braced for the impact.

  In a distant corner of his mind that could concentrate over the unendurable pain and coldness, Emmett wondered if Death—or just death—had finally caught him.

  Emmett screamed as the swarm swallowed him. He raised his arms to cover his eyes, and as his hands brushed up into the shadow mass, he reeled with fear as he felt a thousand different things crawling over his hand.

  Another roar of thunder sounded as the sky broke apart and opened with a streak of lightning flashing through the air, the sizzle of ozone pungent in the rainy night. In the blur of light and darkness, Emmett’s heart raced with hope as he saw someone standing only
feet away from him.

  Help me! Emmett’s mind screamed.

  The darkness of the swarm suddenly parted, and Emmett saw a figure approach. Her dark hair was matted to her face, her glittering eyes searching his for recognition. Her beautiful face was marred by an expression of profound fatigue, her dark features glowing, though, from the brilliant arc of lighting overhead.

  Delirious with cold and pain, Emmett recoiled as he felt something brush against his cheek that was soft and comforting. A hand that had been held before him in his dreams stroked his face now with delicate care, sweeping across his forehead to push his wet, tousled hair from his eyes.

  “Emmett, don’t be afraid. The Archivist is trying to speak to you.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The world was spinning.

  Emmett struggled to focus through the alternating patches of light and darkness clouding the edges of his vision. The edges of his extremities had ceased sending signals of feeling to his brain. He struggled to breathe, painful though it was to expand his chest and even more painful to inhale the biting frozen air. He was dying. Though gradual, the pain was such that he was uncertain if he even cared.

  “I can’t,” Emmett stammered. He didn’t know what he meant to say as he felt Amala’s hand stroking his face. Her touch was comforting, what little of it he could still feel.

  She laid him down on the ground, the writhing cloud still enclosing the two of them in a cocoon free from the rain.

  “Listen to me, Emmett. You need to focus. Look at me,” she said, one hand holding his face as the other grabbed his hand. Even as his awareness was dimming, Emmett could see the same confidence and poise as when he had last seen her.

  He blinked cold tears out of his eyes as he focused, gripping her hand feebly with his own.

  Not dead yet, he told his slowing mind.

  “That’s right, Emmett, just focus on me. I am right here with you,” Amala said, returning Emmett’s grip with her own reassuring one. “Steady your breathing just as we did last time, remember? You can do this,” she said, mimicking the same deep breath that he forced himself to draw.

  He wretched and heaved, feeling the Rot constricting his lungs tighter even as he struggled to draw air. He shook his head as he returned to the shallow, rapid breathing that he was able to manage, desperate to fill his lungs.

  “Keiran, Oliver, Rhiannon, I need you!” Amala called out. Emmett could see through his cloudy vision that the swarm parted again as the two Bards and the red-haired woman appeared. Oliver and the woman were on opposite sides of him as Keiran crouched down directly behind Emmett’s head and, lifting it tenderly, laid it over his knees as he looked down into Emmett’s eyes.

  Emmett squeezed Amala’s hand again as he blinked another pair of tears down the sides of his face, his body violently trembling.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t,” Emmett managed through his trembling mouth.

  “It’s the fever,” the red-haired woman said.

  Oliver stared into Emmett’s pale features. “The Rot has seized onto it.”

  “We need to slow it down,” Amala said, and though Emmett’s fading mind barely registered the words, he still possessed enough awareness to hear the urgency in her voice.

  They know I’m going to die.

  Keiran was cradling Emmett’s head in his hands, and Emmett could feel Keiran begin singing. His song translated as vibrations that coursed throughout his body. It was low and deep, and he poured the song out as his green eyes remained fixed on Emmett’s.

  “Oliver, assist him,” Amala said. He felt his other hand suddenly grasped by Oliver, who placed his free hand on Emmett’s chest and fixed his eyes on him. Emmett felt the throbbing sensation moving down Oliver’s limbs and through both of his hands: a cavernous, yawning feeling that seemed to join and amplify Keiran’s song.

  “Slower,” the red-haired woman urged as she tilted her head and watched Emmett, her hand brushing his floppy hair away from his eyes. “Much slower,” she repeated, and Emmett found that her words seemed to stretch unnaturally as all other sounds lengthened, too.

  The howling winds grew quiet, and the thundering storm faded into the periphery of his awareness.

  “That’s it, Emmett,” he heard Amala slowly say. He saw that her mouth was moving just as slowly. His eyes rolled between Oliver and the red-haired woman, and he saw that the pattern of the rising and falling of their chests was slower, their eyelashes brushing closed in unhurried blinks.

  The world around him was slowing down. The Rot’s stranglehold lessened and he breathed easier for the first time in days.

  “Focus on the swarm,” Amala’s voice was saying somewhere in the distance. Emmett could see her kneeling directly over his body, and yet the slowing sensation seemed to affect the presence of sounds such that someone who was next to him seemed many yards away.

  “Hear the pattern of their sounds. Let them carry you backward.”

  Emmett’s eyes met Keiran’s again, and he saw that he was holding the note with great effort. Oliver looked the same, too. A thin line of blood was slowly seeping out of their noses.

  They can’t do this forever. It’s going to kill them to keep this up.

  Out on the northern tip of an island in the coldest ocean, high above the rest of the unknowing world, Emmett took a steadying breath and closed his eyes with purposeful exhalation.

  Focus on the swarm.

  And when he did, everything happened at once.

  He heard it without hearing it. He knew it without knowing it. The flaps of tiny wings fell away individually until there was only one. Then Emmett heard each of those sounds returning. He could hear a chorus of sound that was vibrant and alive, each sound divergent and distinct. It was not an unruly mass or chaotic swarm; it was a tapestry of sound and life that moved with purpose, with a beginning and an ending, like a masterfully arranged song composed of thousands of perfectly tuned yet individually unique instruments.

  It’s the Song, Emmett believed.

  As he said this to himself, he found that his awareness was slipping backward, focusing his consciousness toward that peaceful, quiet place within himself. The world receded and fell away. His world coalesced with a swirl of merging colors and shifting images, shapes soon taking form along the periphery of his mind. All the while, the Song swirled around him.

  “Emmett Brennan,” he heard an ageless, genderless voice say.

  In the nothingness, Emmett felt himself reach out to the voice with his own awareness. “I’m here, Archivist.”

  “Still with a look of wit. Your journey is not over. Seek me. Open your eyes.”

  Emmett felt himself rushing backward, the world coalescing again as the bitter cold assaulted his skin. Emmett’s awareness quickly stretched throughout his limbs, and with some effort, his mind returned fully to his body, feeling the tingling awareness in his restored limbs.

  “Archivist,” Emmett whispered as he opened his eyes. At once, he felt Keiran and Oliver’s hands pull off of his body, and the low, throbbing sound they had enveloped him in disappeared. The world violently rushed in around him as the deadening constriction of the Rot seized his chest greedily with claws that tore into his muscles and organs.

  Even with the shocking return of all the pain in his body, Emmett could not help but gasp in wonder as he looked up and saw that the dark, writhing swarm had taken shape and color. A glowing luminescence glimmered in millions of eyes as countless butterflies and moths hovered in the air around them, forming a brilliant canvas of color upon which was painted a forest he had never seen.

  Amala and the red-haired woman both raised their eyes upward, looking around with their own unhidden awe. Each insect held its position perfectly despite the pelting rain overhead. As one would fall away in the wind and rain, another would quickly rise to assume its place, drawing in the air a vivid, ever-shifting panoramic canvas of lifelike color and depth around them.

  “Praise her,” the red-haired woman breathed as she gazed
around in wonder.

  Amala stood slowly as if not to disturb the swarm, turning with deliberate care in a circle as she looked upon the living canvas. Emmett watched her move thoughtfully as Keiran and Oliver struggled to lift their heads from the exhaustion their shivering, wet bodies were obviously burdened with.

  “Amala,” Rhiannon whispered, “is this—”

  “Yes,” Amala nodded. “Is this where the Archivist is, Emmett?”

  “She said ‘seek me.’”

  A bellow of thunder resounded in the stormy night as Amala lifted her two hands before her, palms facing out away from her. “We come soon,” Amala said to the swarm with a hushed whisper. A ripple shuddered through the mass of color, and with a strike of lightning that arced across the sky, the swarm disbanded in a flurry of motion and disappeared into the shadowy night.

  The roaring storm returned. A screech sounded over the howling night, and a rustle of flapping wings followed a copper-feathered hawk that swooped down and came to rest on the red-haired woman’s shoulder as if it had been circling overhead the entire time.

  Emmett managed to lift his head enough to see that Oliver was doubled-over. Keiran, too, was slumped, though he had managed to keep Emmett’s head cradled in his knees even as his torso and drooping head threatened to collapse. Emmett could see that his eyes were half-closed and his mouth slightly ajar as the pouring rain mixed with the nosebleed to mat his white skin with red lines.

  Amala moved swiftly and grabbed Keiran’s shoulders. “Help me get them into the van,” she said as she wrested Keiran sideways along the wet ground.

  Rhiannon easily lifted Keiran up as Amala bent over Emmett. Her wide eyes twinkled in the darkness as her hand delicately brushed against his pale, cold cheeks.

  “Hold on, Emmett. I won’t ever let you die,” she whispered before lifting one arm underneath his legs and the other under his shoulders and cradling him in her arms.

  Emmett felt delirious with pain from the movement, only distantly aware that Amala was carrying him. He soon felt dryness and warmth before he moaned heavily and rocked to one side on a hard, metal floor.